The invention relates to a light wave conductor with a detector connected thereto, in which the light is guided in a first semiconductive layer which is arranged between two further semiconductive layers and the material of these layers has a larger dielectric constant than the bordering semiconductive layers.
Proposals have already been made for guiding light in a certain layer of a semiconductor arrangement. For example, triple-layer semiconductor arrangements having different dielectric constants from layer to layer are used for this. The light is guided, for example, in the centre layer of three epitaxially deposited semiconductive layers. The semiconductive layers bordering the photoconductive layer comprise a material, the dielectric constant of which is smaller than that of the photoconductive layer. In this way the light is prevented from leaving the photoconductive layer. A photodiode is used, for example, for the purpose of detection, this diode being arranged at the end of a light circuit of this type. There are two essential problems here which are to be solved by the present invention. In the arrangement which has been proposed the light at the boundary surface between the lighting circuit and the light detector is reflected, so that the efficiency of the entire arrangement is reduced. Moreover, only one specific avalanche diode may be used for light detection, as, until now, it was the only one which had the desired short response time.